Xbox? Not an Xbox? Who cares? The ROG Xbox Ally is a wonder

More PC than console

Oct 15, 2025

It’s likely that the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally will land to conflicting perspectives.

Seen through the lens of a lifelong console player, the system simply isn’t ready to be compared to the locked-down, slick user experience of a Nintendo Switch 2.

But viewed by a lifelong PC gamer, especially one with experience playing on today’s handheld PC gaming systems, that’s a different story altogether.

This story.

The latest iteration of Asus’ handheld gaming PC is more revolution than evolution, thanks to a deep partnership with Microsoft and an Xbox wrapper that stretches far beyond a bit of badging and an extra button.

The ROG Xbox Ally officially arrives on Oct. 16 in two versions. The ROG Xbox Ally, which features an AMD Ryzen Z2 A processor, 16GB RAM, and 512GB of storage, costs about $600. The ROG Xbox Ally X features an AMD Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme Processor, 24GB RAM, and 1TB of storage, and will cost you about $1,000.

ASUS was kind enough to send me a review unit of the ROG Xbox Ally X a week or so ago, and I’ve spent my evenings playing everything from the Call of Duty beta to Battlefield 6, to games like Hollow Knight: Silksong.

As a handheld gaming aficionado and collector (I have more than 200 systems dating back to 1975 and including a half dozen handheld gaming PCs), I’ve extensive experience with various forms of user interface, game installation, and ergonomics. I can comfortably say that the ROG Xbox Ally X is one of, if not the, most powerful handhelds I’ve ever played games on. It’s also one of the more comfortable systems, and is on the cusp of delivering an experience that masterfully erases many of the traces of the biggest issues found in most Windows-based PC handheld systems: Windows.

Ergonomics

I was doubtful when I got my first look at the ROG Xbox Ally’s new design. It looked a lot like someone had slapped the grips of an Xbox controller onto the body of the ROG Ally X. While that’s a fairly accurate description, it turns out that addition has an oversized impact on the ergonomics of the handheld.

I’ve found that while playing during lengthy sessions on the earlier ROG Allys, I start to subconsciously straighten my wrists a bit, flattening the screen and making it a bit harder to see. I pull the system back up every time I notice this, but it’s an annoyance. I suspect it has a bit to do with the design, which has you gripping the side of a rectangle.

While the ROG Ally X tweaked the shape of the bottom corners of the system to smooth it out a bit more and remove a hard edge in the bottom corners, it didn’t change that behavior for me. The addition of grips, however, did.. Not only is the new design more comfortable, but the palms of my hands no longer block the forward-facing speakers on the system. The new design also has the added benefit of shifting your hand position out a bit, which more naturally places the thumbsticks right at your fingertips.

The face buttons, thumbsticks, directional pad, bumpers, and even the small back buttons all feel very similar to the Ally X’s, but the triggers feel more luxurious with a stronger pull and better sense of depth.

The other major change to the system is a prominent Xbox button, which instantly launches the redesigned Game Bar. The Game Bar gives you access to everything from settings to friends lists and captures. What I find most compelling, though, is that the home tab prominently features the other stores you’ve installed on your system. So, for instance, if you have Steam and the Epic Games Store on there, both of those icons are sitting next to the Xbox icon on your Game Bar home tab.

User Interface

No amount of revamped ergonomics, colorful lights, haptics, or Dolby sound will cover up the fact that a Windows gaming handheld is still a Windows PC. That’s something we learned as ASUS, Lenovo, and others fought for the crown of best handheld gaming PC. Despite its limitations on things like cheat software and some games, the Steam Deck managed to trounce the competition mostly because it wasn’t running Windows.

To my delight, Microsoft seems to have finally gotten the message and done a lot of work on making sure you don’t feel like you’re playing games on a Windows PC when you boot up the Xbox Ally.

The first big change is that you can boot directly into the new and improved Xbox app. Once you sign in on the start screen, the system launches you directly into the Xbox experience without a desktop in sight.

Visually, it essentially looks a bit like Steam’s Big Picture mode. It’s the Xbox app running in full screen, designed for console controls. More intriguing is what is happening in the background, or to be specific, what isn’t happening. According to Microsoft, when you’re in the full-screen Xbox experience, the system minimizes background activity and defers non-essential tasks to ensure more system resources are dedicated specifically to gameplay.

You can drop out of the mode and go to your desktop, but when you return, the system warns you that if you want to experience those features, you need to reboot.

The Xbox app also does an admirable job of supporting other storefronts with very little extra work on your part. Once installed and signed in, the storefronts not only appear in the app, the games you play most, no matter what store you play on, appear right at the top of the home screen under the Jump Back In section. Each game thumbnail features an icon to show which store it runs through. The whole experience feels like the best off-the-shelf launcher for Windows gaming currently on the market.

That isn’t to say there aren’t areas that could be improved. The search bar, which always looms at the top of every page in the app, bugs me. It seems like something that could be hidden until you need it. Its current design mars what would be a much more console-like view.

My biggest disappointment, though, is something I hope to see corrected in the coming days. Microsoft announced months ago that a new game badging system would be coming to the Xbox app with the launch of this new system.

But as of this writing (six minutes before embargo lift), the badges are nowhere to be seen. Once in operation, the games in the Xbox store should support what Microsoft is calling the Handheld Compatibility Program. This new initiative would place distinct badges on games showing that they are either handheld-optimized or mostly compatible with a handheld.

But the closest I’ve seen to that as of this morning is a category in the store of handheld optimized games, still shown without badges.

The badging system will deliver one of the missing pieces for a system that is very close to delivering something akin to playing on a purpose-built handheld.

Conclusion

So are these systems worth the price of play?

That really depends on what you’re looking for.

Even in its current state, the ROG Xbox Ally X does an amazing job of delivering a console-like experience on a Windows system, somehow hiding many of the annoyances that have increasingly plagued the operating system.

And it does so without diminishing the power of Windows. What I mean is that you can still go into the desktop and run anything that runs on a Windows machine. You can connect the system to a television or a monitor and watch movies. You can add a keyboard and mouse and write, do your taxes, browse the internet.

With its array of buttons and inputs (which include a touch screen), its many ports ( which include both Display and Thunderbolt support), a 7-inch, 120Hz refresh rate display, and easy-to-upgrade storage, this could very well become the future of gaming.

But that future comes with a price.

Is this an Xbox?

Sure, why not? But it’s more computer than console.